Choice of a web browser

Reading this thread, I have installed chromium from package tree but found venerable. This was same for package vlc, due to libsndfile. Those who are using ports tree can avoid this situation. Probably packages in package tree are being created by a method which can not check sanity accordingly.
Installing www/firefox is still now a problem ( try,try & try).
I use www/firefox & www/palemoon from package tree on laptop & from ports on desktop.
 
I just spent the evening upgrading www/firefox-esr to 60.1.0esr, fiddling with it mostly to get around the now long vulnerable audio/libsndfile and update everything else that needed it, only to find out it now uses the Firefox Quantum Engine.

Which I do not like to begin with and broke a couple of my legacy extensions to make matters worse.
 
Reading this thread, I have installed chromium from package tree but found venerable. This was same for package vlc, due to libsndfile. Those who are using ports tree can avoid this situation. Probably packages in package tree are being created by a method which can not check sanity accordingly.

pkg will gladly install a vulnerability for you without asking questions.

+1 for ports.

I uninstalled audio/libsndfile from one of my other machines a couple months ago and haven't had a problem with watching videos or listening to music since:

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/any-solutions-for-the-libsndfile-vulnerability.65321/#post-383120

It's the box I'm rebuilding ports on now I reference above
 
I am upset at modern browsers to be honest. All I want is read some text, and as text reading software, every browser sucks balls.

I was quite happy with vimb-gtk3, but webkit.
 
problems running Firefox
I had no problem with firefox. Some one told about chromium & opera. So I tried both from pkg tree and deleted after some time. Actually in devuan, there was only firefox-esr & waiting for EOL. So here I am using palemoon & firefox.
Now I am really confused about firefox-esr-60 & firefox-61, two channels.
As far as safety is concern one would like to have something like (fire)jail with little configuration. All most all sites, other than text based, are not safe.
 
I am upset at modern browsers to be honest. All I want is read some text, and as text reading software, every browser sucks balls.

I was quite happy with vimb-gtk3, but webkit.

I am surprised that at least someone says this thing. It is not too much the browsers, but largely HTML and what it became. Look heavy google drive or gmail, ... or MS outlook, and all the junks of ads on any webpage. Cookies pop#ups,... https://edition.cnn.com, youtube, bbc, ... take ages to load. Eats up your memory.
Then, join "links" this is fast. ;)

Really why not dropping the whole internet, making a another WEB with simple alternative to HTML ? HTML, what the point. A markup language should be delimited by a ";" or be looking like a C language or line defined. // /* */ The regular <" " ,... > stuffs aren't easy to read sometimes.
Markdown or markups, are good markup languages, which may need interests... to replace the modern slow HTML, Java, PHP, CSS,...

HTML was originally made for sciences and exchanges for research. Knowledge platform for everyone.

HTML is now business and commercial. Hence, there is not research interests behind the spider of web.

Consequently, HTML (and all derivatives) aren't any longer dedicated to research and communications.
 
Now I am really confused about firefox-esr-60 & firefox-61, two channels.

Until the bump yesterday www/firefox-esr was essentially Firefox before it went Quantum Strangeness. Most, if not all, of the extensions the Quantum Engine broke still worked on ESR.


As far as safety is concern one would like to have something like (fire)jail with little configuration. All most all sites, other than text based, are not safe.

That's why I'm such an advocate for browser extensions. You can't even disable JavaScript in the Firefox options menu like you used to be able to do. See Mozilla NoScript or uMatrix extensions for that option.
 
It is not too much the browsers, but largely HTML and what it became.
Little of what people complain about has to do with HTML at all. Most of it is everything but HTML and, even then, it's not the language but the people behind the web site. HTML doesn't create bloated web sites, people create bloated web sites.

A number of designers advocate the return to a minimalist web site. Just a couple of days ago, I thought I would volunteer my services to a group which took a minimalist style. The first comment was that they thought it was wonderful because everything was so clear and obvious. But, after a few minutes, "that guy" brought up that similar sites had magic, and fireworks and explosions and popups and carousels and balloons and we should have it, too! I'd spend more time on all that than on the rest of the site and gave them a take it or leave it comment.

This "me too" stuff is what compounds problems with web sites where non-designers and UI specialists attempt to create a site based on what they've seen elsewhere and not based on experience and research. These are the slow loading sites that hang waiting for some off site ad resource to load while running an animation which serves only the purpose of being "cool".

But HTML and programs and the browsers, to an extent, are not the problem.
 
Really why not dropping the whole internet, making a another WEB with simple alternative to HTML ? HTML, what the point. A markup language should be delimited by a ";" or be looking like a C language or line defined. // /* */ The regular <" " ,... > stuffs aren't easy to read sometimes.
Markdown or markups, are good markup languages, which may need interests... to replace the modern slow HTML, Java, PHP, CSS,...

My site only uses Valid XHTML and CSS, is very simple to read and typed by hand. View the source of the tutorial page. Sans images it loads like lightning. Here are the result for my text only tutorial page, wall of text that it is:

speedtest.png

https://gtmetrix.com/reports/trihexagonal.org/DF5Pe3Ps

There are more stats on the page. Test server region is Vancouver, Canada, my site is hosted in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Netcraft lists it. The only active Server-Side Technology is XML and the only trackers are my code validation widgets on every page. Because if it isn't Valid, it isn't XHTML.

But, after a few minutes, "that guy" brought up that similar sites had magic, and fireworks and explosions and popups and carousels and balloons and we should have it, too!

Dancing Baloney. :)
 
Little of what people complain about has to do with HTML at all. Most of it is everything but HTML and, even then, it's not the language but the people behind the web site. HTML doesn't create bloated web sites, people create bloated web sites.

A number of designers advocate the return to a minimalist web site. Just a couple of days ago, I thought I would volunteer my services to a group which took a minimalist style. The first comment was that they thought it was wonderful because everything was so clear and obvious. But, after a few minutes, "that guy" brought up that similar sites had magic, and fireworks and explosions and popups and carousels and balloons and we should have it, too! I'd spend more time on all that than on the rest of the site and gave them a take it or leave it comment.

This "me too" stuff is what compounds problems with web sites where non-designers and UI specialists attempt to create a site based on what they've seen elsewhere and not based on experience and research. These are the slow loading sites that hang waiting for some off site ad resource to load while running an animation which serves only the purpose of being "cool".

But HTML and programs and the browsers, to an extent, are not the problem.

We have today a plethora of programming languages and markups.

The problem lies that those websites are for commercial purposes, so they use a web browser for some aims which aren't made for it.
Shall a webbrowser be what it is not meant to be. Ideally big companies use everything over the browser, to lock forever the users, and tie up the "customer"
They never give the source code of the php,... stuffs behind, so why shall we use them.

We do not use close source softwares, right? We can't, we use free opensource for open scientific community and computer sciences.
 
My site only uses Valid XHTML
Yeah but

  1. Connection: Keep-Alive
    [*]Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
    [*]Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2018 23:37:34 GMT
    [*]Keep-Alive: timeout=3, max=170
    [*]Server: Apache
    [*]Transfer-Encoding: chunked

Writing XHTML but serving it as HTML is known as "tag soup". Your serve what is, essentially, broken HTML and the browser has to figure out what you meant with the HTML parser. To truly deliver XHTML, you need to serve it as application/xhtml+xml
 
Thank you very much for bringing that to my attention. I am a stickler for accuracy in my work and would have a panic attack if I discovered I had accidentally uploaded invalid code.

I'll get right on it.
 
drhowarddrfine, I am always open to constructive criticism, value your opinion and respect brutal honesty. Since this is a thread about browsers, and interoperability isn't off-topic, feel free to fire away. I can take it as well as I can dish it out.

Web design is not my strong suit. I know it looks plain and like something straight off GeoCities. That's where I put up my first site, and a minimalist web site has been brought into the discussion.

Though for my upcoming 1 Year Online Anniversary next month I might have a little dancing baloney in convivial celebration. And everything will be Free!!!
 
What do you think about WebAsmembly?
I like the idea if you need that but many people think it replaces JavaScript. It doesn't so don't let that creep into your thinking. When you feel the need for speed, that's when you might turn to WebAssembly.

Trihexagonal I often find people who write XHTML and claim they are using it only because they used the syntax. They often don't realize that the browser determines which parser to use based on the HTTP header first. I roll my eyes when I see people put a closing slash on <br /> and <img /> and claim, "so I'll be compatible with XHTML", when the reality is they just broke their site for HTML.

I love XHTML, and the computer scientists at the W3C were on the right track in wanting to drop HTML in favor of it (and XML), but today's script kiddies find it too complicated. "Draconian" is the word they like to use. But now we find new specifications and APIs dealing with custom elements, properties, and so on just like XML and people think it's wonderful. We've come full circle and no one seems to have noticed.
 
I like the idea if you need that but many people think it replaces JavaScript. It doesn't so don't let that creep into your thinking. When you feel the need for speed, that's when you might turn to WebAssembly.
I didn't think so. I want to know your view about asm.js and wasm. People nowaday have a lot of transpilers to compile code from a language to run inside the browser, think the browser now became an OS inside an OS and it's cool. They've transpilers to transpile C++ code to run on browser. I wonder how dynamic memory allocation works inside a browser :-/
 
Trihexagonal I often find people who write XHTML and claim they are using it only because they used the syntax. They often don't realize that the browser determines which parser to use based on the HTTP header first. I roll my eyes when I see people put a closing slash on <br /> and <img /> and claim, "so I'll be compatible with XHTML", when the reality is they just broke their site for HTML.

I taught myself to write XHTML and CSS for fun at W3Schools in 1998 or 1999. I promote them and have an "I Heart Validator" button support link. Some of my markup dates back to what I've written 14 years ago, saved, and if I've written it once I copy and paste what I need as practice. I never knew about the meta tag error and am honestly glad you told me. My markup has to be right.

I have a website at Angelfire I moved from GeoCities that shows I've been doing it wrong since 2000. Crosshair cursor included:

Solar Storm Monitor

My author and machine username remain the same. It's one I eventually tuned into an XHTML 1.0 Frameset site at my uberkomplex domain. Their injection of ads invalidated my markup, and irked me to no end, but my CSS is still valid. NASA link code has changed since I abandoned it so some of my guages are no longer functional:

I'm a Master of XHTML Frameset, can lay them in any arrangement top, bottom and sides, or offset them to spiral down into a 1" square in the middle as an exercise. All useless skill today. I do have a mock Frameset site made up for my domain though.
 

Yes, I know, or I would whip one up in a flash. :) it would cause untold havoc in a smart phone to say the least, not to mention search engines.

However, my XHTML 1.0 Frameset markup is still valid as of right now. It uses a head, foot and content frame in addition to the index.html to bring it all together, and scales down like it should with the screen size. The index is the only Frameset page, the rest are XHTML Transitional:

frameset01.png

I see now that W3C recommends application/xhtml+xml.

https://www.w3.org/International/articles/serving-xhtml/
 
Yeah but


Writing XHTML but serving it as HTML is known as "tag soup". Your serve what is, essentially, broken HTML and the browser has to figure out what you meant with the HTML parser. To truly deliver XHTML, you need to serve it as application/xhtml+xml

we should let (x)html lives its commercial purpose and development, supported by biggest Apple, Microsoft, Google,... of computer industry.
A good way would be maybe to re-visit the html for other purposes than only money.e
 
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